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“Brief Candle,” by Jason K. Chapman (2009) E

February 22, 2010 in Book, Short stories by Emera | No comments

Date read: 11.15.09
Read from: Clarkesworld #38
Reviewer: Emera

Jason Chapman’s “Brief Candle” is a clever, winning tale of an unpreposessing sanitation robot onboard an imperiled ship. In a sort of AI-fueled homage to Flowers for Algernon (down to the name of the protagonist), the robot finds himself taking on much more responsibility than, literally, he could have ever imagined. It’s a marvellously entertaining story, with a quick, crisp narrative that revels in the meticulously imagined details that it unfolds.

Some of the humor was a bit too cute and obvious to work for me, and by the same token, the efficacy of the ending may depend on your willingness to have your heartstrings tugged; I felt a little resistant to the overt emotional appeal, but possibly I’m just being curmudgeonly. After all, I do tend to smile whenever I think of this story - it’s hard to be a grump about something so warm and fun.

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Jason K. Chapman

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The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau (2003) E

January 30, 2010 in Book, Novels by Emera | 4 comments

Date read: 1.26.10
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

Jeanne DuPrau - The City of Ember

“The city of Ember was made for us long ago by the Builders. It is the only light in the dark world. Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all directions.”

At the age of twelve, every child in Ember is assigned a job. Curious, bright-spirited Lina Mayfleet longs to be a messenger, but is instead assigned to dreary, dirty work in the underground Pipeworks. Doon Harrow, her classmate, is convinced that the sporadic blackouts of the great lamps of Ember - the only lights in a world of immeasurable darkness - forebode worse troubles for the city. He longs to investigate the enormous generator in the Pipeworks that provides the city with all of its power, so when he receives the job of messenger, he and Lina eagerly swap their assignments. As the blackouts increase in frequency and fear spreads among Ember’s citizens, Lina soon comes to share Doon’s suspicions that Ember is a dying city. Together the two embark on a search to uncover Ember’s origins, and to find a way to lead their people to the bright city that Lina is sure exists somewhere in the Unknown Regions beyond Ember.

I didn’t enjoy The City of Ember nearly as much as I thought I would, for all that it’s a rather endearing book. The characters and setting are warmly evoked, with detailed and frequently beautiful descriptions, and of course the concept is fantastic to begin with - Ember is one of those fictional realms you wish you could visit, and more often than not end up carrying around with you in your head after reading. (I imagined it looking like a less anarchic version of the city in the film La Cité des Enfants Perdus/The City of Lost Children, and would pay a large amount of imaginary money to run along its streets and peer into its shops.)

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Antibodies, by David Skal (1988) K

December 30, 2009 in Book, Novels by kakaner | 1 comment

Date Read: 6.27.09
Book From: Personal Collection
Reviewer: Kakaner

I have finally waded out of a merciless sea of deadlines, grad apps, visiting parents, and other such nonsense to bring you a review of scifi crack in book form. So I apologize for my contribution to any recent TBL droughts.

Antibodies is the story of a pale anorexic woman, Diandra, who nurtures an unhealthy desire to become a machine. She is true in every way to the Antibodies cult– starving and draining the blood from her body to entirely prepare herself for mechanical integration. However, circumstances prevent her from completing her transition smoothly. She is captured by the notorious hedonistic psychiatrist Julian Nagy who runs a therapy clinic to heal, and eventually exploit, those of the cult. At the same time, her only guides through this process are vague and ominous directions from the Antibodies authority while contending with the resentment of the public.

I discovered this book through a Coilhouse link Emera flinged my way over a year ago and behold, it bobbed up to the surface of my 100+ TBR pool and I have actually managed to read it. Well, I was pretty hooked after Coilhouse described it as a “deeply disturbing, brutally unsparing book” which sounded right up my twisted alley.

Don’t be fooled by the summary. Antibodies certainly sounds fascinating– a solid mix of cyberpunk and cult fantasy with a generous dollop of scifi fetish braincandy– but it is altogether entirely horrific. It takes many elements of our current society and exaggerates and stretches them into a possible future universe in which people worship and want to become the technology they have created. The depravity of humanity is evident as its constituents are each proponents of some broken part of our very system. Let’s see what Coilhouse has to say:

That’s what Antibodies is, at its heart: a horror novel. There are no heroes here, only the deluded and the ruthlessly predatory. But for all its Gran Guignol touches, Antibodies hits home. In a rush to the future, it’s easy to forget or ignore the wreckage that draws in the alienated and insane into any dream that offers them easy transcendence from their previous lives.

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Shadow of the Giant, by Orson Scott Card (2005)

November 12, 2009 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Date read: 10.28.09
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

Aaaand approximately 11 years after I first read Ender’s Game, I’ve finally finished the last book of the original two Ender series.  (Nope, still haven’t read Ender in Exile, though Kakaner has already hit it up.) I feel as though I should get some kind of prize, especially since I almost never read series anymore. Somewhat fragmentary review follows; spoiler-free so long as you have a feel for the general trajectory of the series. Since the plot is so dependent on all the previous novels, I didn’t really bother contextualizing the summary.

Lots of wrapping-up of business here. The China/India/Muslim world/rest of the world duke-out winds to a finish as Peter slowly builds the prestige and influence of the Free People of the Earth, working both through subtle manipulations and Bean’s reputation and strategic abilities. Virlomi is seized with an ever-greater conviction that she is, in fact, backed by divine forces. Bean and Petra race to find their remaining children before the planned greater-than-lightspeed journey that will preserve Bean’s life as scientists back on earth work to find a cure for his condition.

Overall, I found this tighter and more compelling overall than Shadow of the Hegemon, possibly because it’s more clearly end-directed and hence has greater momentum.

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“Spar,” by Kij Johnson (2009) K

October 29, 2009 in Book, Short stories by kakaner | 4 comments

Date Read: 10.28.09
Read From: Clarkesworld Magazine
Reviewer: Kakaner

“Spar” is a grim, vulgar, unrelenting torrent of images and words that will leave you mouth agape and reeling. It is the horrifying tale of neverending rape and an examination of the human psyche under a most extreme duress. The storytelling definitely fits the actions and story– short, hard sentences and fragments contrasting wistful remembrances of a life before. Johnson has created somewhat of a short fiction monster here, and I personally still don’t know quite what to make of it.

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Kij Johnson
Clarkesworld Magazine

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“Advection,” by Genevieve Valentine (2009) E

October 25, 2009 in Book, Short stories by Emera | 2 comments

Date read: 8.14.09
Read from: Clarkesworld Magazine
Reviewer: Emera

Genevieve Valentine’s “Advection” is a wistful, elegiac, soft science fiction story, set amid the elite children of an Earth that has lost its oceans and rain. Though light on character development, it’s full of runs of understated lyricism, and beautifully sustains a mood of distant yearning. I felt thoughtful and pleasantly melancholy after reading it, and one of its central images hasn’t left my mind since.

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Genevieve Valentine
Clarkesworld Magazine

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Galápagos, by Kurt Vonnegut (1985) E

October 11, 2009 in Book, Novels by Emera | No comments

Date read: 4.29.08
Read from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

As the world economy crashes and the majority of the human race begins to plunge to its end, half a dozen oblivious individuals  make their way aboard a luxury cruise liner. The ship will indeed reach its ultimate destination - the Galápagos Islands - but rather than enjoying the “Nature Cruise of the Century,” its passengers will instead become the progenitors of a new humanity.

I felt a little foolish reading Galápagos since it’s heavily interwoven with references to other works in Vonnegut’s canon, in particular referencing Slaughterhouse-5 stylistically, when the only other Vonnegut novel I’ve read to date is Cat’s Cradle. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, which, in typical Vonnegut style, is a loopy, frightening, and brilliant satire that manages to be utterly compelling sci-fi without necessarily hewing all that closely to little things like scientific reality.

The narrative is executed with almost dizzying meta-playfulness (the meta aspect actually being explained by events later in the book), jumping from character to character while variously concealing, foreshadowing, and fragmenting the events of the plot. And though I sometimes find it hard to actually care about the characters in satires, I found the brittle, desperate cast of Galápagos strangely lovable. Much of this is thanks to Vonnegut’s tone, which is sad, funny, bitter, and loving in a way that makes you suspect he half-regrets loving anyone in the first place, but he can’t help himself, either.

Both novels of Vonnegut’s that I’ve read have a unique perspective on the absurdity of human life - both times, I’ve gotten a sense of actions that are simultaneously tiny and monumental, meaningless and all-important, cascading across a vastly bleak landscape. Here, Vonnegut asks the question of whether humanity will survive once we’ve done our best (unintentionally or otherwise) to destroy it - and if so, in what shape. And would the planet be losing anything anyway, if humanity as we see it now were to disappear? Vonnegut doesn’t quite say yes or no, which is one of the aspects of Galápagos that most make it worth reading.

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Kurt Vonnegut

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Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card (2008) K

September 9, 2009 in Book, Novels by kakaner | 2 comments

Date Read: 12.28.08
Book From: BNN Piracy now Personal Collection
Reviewer: Kakaner

After Emera posted her Shadow Puppets review, I was inspired to dig this up, so here it is.

Summary

After the Bugger Wars, Ender is caught in social crossfire and a political tug-of-war on Earth; as a result, he ultimately decides to embark on a deep space colonization journey with his sister Valentine. Through the eyes of other colonials, Ender’s Battle School acquaintances and mentors, and Ender himself, we learn of Ender’s journey to becoming Speaker for the Dead. Along the way he encounters many of his old Battle School jeesh and finds himself once again involved in and responsible for their actions.

Review

This will be a rather spotty review– at the time I read Ender in Exile, I simply wrote down different aspects or parts that really jumped out at me or about which I had something to say. And since that is what I have to work with, that is what you’ll get.

I picked this up (like I suspect most others did) after having been away from the Ender universe for years. So many things were disconcerting yet familiar… such as the ever-present discrepancy between the age and maturity of characters. For example, whenever Card reminded us that Ender was 12, I would do a huge double-take. Same with Valentine. And Virlomi. And basically all other world/nation leaders. When I read Ender’s Game as a child, I thought the concept was brilliant, and really admired Ender and his jeesh for being so ahead of their time and age. However, the more I read into the Ender universe the more I wonder if it’s possibly Card’s inability, disregard, or lack of willingness to embrace the YA characters and genre.

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Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card (2002) E

September 9, 2009 in Book, Novels by Emera | 3 comments

Date read: 8.22.09 (re-read; originally read in about 2004 or 2005)
Read from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

N.B. This review is probably not very accessible to anyone who hasn’t read any of the Shadow Saga sequels to Ender’s Game, as this comes nearly at the tail end of the series. If you haven’t read any of the series, you may also wish to not read this review for fear of spoilers.

Some poor decision-making on the part of Peter Wiggin, adolescent Hegemon extraordinaire, leaves the fledgling Hegemony and its resources in the hands of Achilles. Though nominally disgraced in the eyes of the world after the revelation of his international-scale treachery, Achilles is as dangerous as ever. His new power puts him in position to re-enter the game of political manipulation, and sends Bean and Petra – his most hated enemies – into hiding. Meanwhile, the other members of Ender’s Jeesh continue to jockey for the precedence of their respective countries, while themselves often ignored or manipulated by their own governments. In short, the world is paying the price for having nursed a generation of young Napoleons, and Bean and Petra find themselves at the center of events, just when they have come to realize that what they value most is simply each other’s happiness.

My main impression of this was: bridge novel. It’s so obviously written as the sort of mid-series book that has to begin at one place, and get to another, such that while I was fairly engaged when reading, I kept on losing interest in following it as a whole. Overall I’ve become slightly disenchanted with Orson Scott Card, both on the basis that I find many of his political and personal opinions repugnant and on the basis that… frankly, I don’t think he’s a genius as much as I used to anymore. I’ve been re-reading the Shadow series because the final book hadn’t yet been published when I first ran through the series, so I’ve had to catch up again. A lot has changed in how I read in these past few years, so while Ender’s Game is still next to sacred in my canon and thus I don’t let myself nitpick it, it’s easier now to see the flaws in the rest of his books.

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The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (2003) E

September 9, 2009 in Book, Novels by Emera | 2 comments

Date read: 8.27.09
Read from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

Henry DeTamble travels, involuntarily, in time; Clare Abshire is the woman who has loved him since she was 6 years old, and he, displaced in time - but in his own timeline already married to her - introduces himself to her in a meadow. The Time Traveler’s Wife charts the the convoluted course of their love, and all the hazards, vagaries, joy, and anguish that Henry’s strange condition brings into their lives.

Kakaner has been begging me to read this for years. This August I finally gave her the satisfaction of receiving a barrage of emails from me exclaiming over the book as I plowed through it in a handful of days. I was absolutely sucked in, and despite her warning that she’d found the first 100 pages of the book slow going, the first half-ish of the book was actually my favorite. I loved the slow back-and-forth as Clare works her way through life to her first meeting with in-time Henry - I found the scenes of her childhood and young adulthood (and the interspersed glimpses of Henry’s childhood and his first, innocently bedazzled experiences of time travel) beautiful and singularly lush, and I loved feeling so connected with Clare as a character, so immersed in her experience of growing up, and feeling as intensely as she does the anxiety and excitement of each impending encounter with Henry. (Sucker for young love, right here.)

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